Part of the reason Kobe Bryant is Kobe Bryant is an unwavering self-confidence — he has put in the work, he believes in what he can do and sometimes that means he trusts himself shooting a contested shot over a double team than it does hitting the open man (when that man was Smush Parker, could you blame him?).

All through his recovery from a ruptured Achilles tendon Kobe has been his same confident, competitive self, talking about destroying the timeline for his return.

“As I sit here with you now, I’m telling you now I’ll come back 100 percent,” Bryant said in a recent appearance in China. “But I don’t know if I’m sure. I have moments and days where I doubt myself….

“The people who say they will never come back from this injury, to me, that says if they had this injury, they would quit,” Bryant said. “That’s what it means to me. If they sit here and look at me and say I can’t do it, that means if it happened to you, you wouldn’t do it. I have to show them just as much as I show people who support me that this can be done and I can come back from this. By me coming back, it shows the people who doubt me to reconsider what’s possible.”

A more human Kobe who has these questions in his head is little more relatable. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Kobe recently went to Germany for Oktoberfest, er, to get platelet-rich plasma therapy on his right knee. (I’m sure the timing is coincidental, but if he had a liter-beer while there, could you blame him?) He has been driven in his return as he always has been. He will come back, no doubt.

Will he be quite the same player? That’s another question for another day, but any playoff hopes the Lakers have hinge on it.